I can already see a bit of an emerging trend in this documentation process: practice, synthesize, write, post.
If these four steps take place on the same calendar day, great, but as long as the sum total of the session-in-question’s reflection is neatly packaged and shipped into the ether of the internet within 24 hours, I am pleased.
Yesterday (or simply earlier in the newly minted 24-hour Aho practice cycle) I reviewed the work of day 1, plugged away at some more of the opening page of the first movement, revisited a selection from the third page of the first movement, and practiced much of the second movement, including extended lines with harmonics. I went into this session with a few goals, all of which were achieved.
establish what I retained from the first day
see how stable my microtone fingerings are when I use a different reed, since I will use many, many reeds over the course of this process and do not want to choose fingerings that only work with certain reeds/styles of reeds
look into the second and third movements to see what lies in wait
Some more thoughts that emerged from this seemingly simple approach (this session was only about an hour and a half):
I need to acquire a copy of the oboe technique manual that Aho referenced when writing the piece as there are many fingerings marked into the score. There are many fingerings marked in the part, but I suspect that some work on fully-automatic octave system oboes. This is an unfounded claim, but at least on my Yamaha 841, many of the microtone fingerings that I have settled upon for notes around the half-hole range are not those marked in the score. In an effort to make a reproducable/informed performance guide to this work (what this blog is likely going to result in), I have been marking in the fingerings that I am using and will continue to do so.
Second line g quarter sharp is very difficult to place and does require some embouchure acrobatics to truly put in the right ‘spot’.
Playing chromatic scales (can I still use the word chromatic?) which are comprised of quarter tones is very satisfying, but sometimes I lose track of which note in the sequence I am on.
There is a big difference between the f quarter flat above the third ledger line and the e quarter sharp just one line below. This feels very strange.
I now have a solid fingering for third octave g sharp/a flat.
More and more often, I am finding that I should always use my third octave key for f above the third ledge line - I do not know why I never did this previously.
This is very satisfying work and I am thankful to be doing it and thankful for the space to do it. I might, however, need to put a sign on my office door for when Aho is being practiced that simply says “Yes, it is in fact suppossed to sound like that, at least I think so.”
